Alaskan Undead Apocalypse (Book 4): Resolution (47 page)

A small group of the creatures was coming at
them from down toward the ferry depot. They looked like tourists
from hell with their choice of clothing and odds and ends still
attached to belts and hooked around arms. They must have died
clutching those meager possessions as if they would somehow protect
them from the inevitable. Now they were doomed to walk eternity
encumbered with the useless junk. Carter was more than willing to
help them out of that hassle.

The snow had stopped, leaving the ground
slippery in spots. Most of the accumulated snow had gathered where
it had been blown against the sides of buildings or vehicle tires.
The wind was sharper, cutting through Carter’s black jacket and
chilling his bones.

“We take out these few first and then deal
with the next group,” Carter instructed. “Save your ammo. We may
need it.”

His wooden bat still sporting the crusty
gore and tissue from his last encounter, Carter twirled the weapon
around as if warming up for his turn in softball. The sharpened
wedges of steel driven into the business end of the bat belied its
actual purpose.

The eight people following behind him were
similarly armed, some carrying axes, others modified and sharpened
shovels, and still others handcrafted spears and pikes. They were
the citizen levee marching off to battle under the banner of some
medieval lord.

Into battle they charged, Carter leading
them all the way. He ran toward the group, swinging his bat left
and right. Carter looked to his left and saw that Mason, armed with
a pike, was there with him. “This is gonna be great kid!!” he
shouted. “Look at ‘em go down. Hahahahahaha!”

Mason wasn’t sure which worried him more,
the zombies or Carter’s insanity, for Carter’s eyes were those of a
madman. Pretending that he was simply doing an unpleasant chore,
Mason jabbed the sharpened end of his very long spear into the eye
socket of one of the ghouls and quickly retracted it before the
creature fell. He stepped to the left to ensure that none of the
things were able to get around their flank and behind them. He
thrust the spear tip into the mouth of another monster, driving the
sharpened point through the back of its skull. Again he pulled the
pike clear. If he didn’t think about what he was doing, he could
get through it. He just kept telling himself that they weren’t
people he was killing.

Mason jabbed his spear into yet another one,
but it jerked unexpectedly. Unfortunately, the pike pierced through
the beast’s throat and only impaled it, doing no real damage.
Sensing Mason nearby, the zombie turned its whole body, the wound
on its throat stretching into a widening hole.

Mason’s stomach rolled over onto itself as
his fear gripped him. He closed his eyes, fearing the worst, until
he heard a bone-crunching thwack in front of him. Opening his eyes,
he saw Carter’s bat being removed from the zombie’s crushed skull.
Carter smiled his lunatic’s smile and moved on to his next
victim.

The street was filling up with bodies when a
second group came on the heels of the first. The second group was
only about ten deep but everyone’s arms were starting to feel heavy
with fatigue. Carter too noticed his swings lacking their normal
vigor. For him though, the realization only fueled his anger.

With renewed vengeance, Carter lit into the
new arrivals. His swings shattered jaws, smashed limbs, and
obliterated skulls. Carter’s black jacket was coated with the foul,
jellied inner fluids from his foes. His hair was damp and dense
with a mixture of his sweat and the same foulness on the rest of
him. He heaved his air in hungry lungfuls, almost choking. He bent
at the waist and rested his hands on his knees.

Still breathing deeply, Carter said, “Ok-ay.
We can...we can head back…now. Woooh! I guess I’m not used...to
working...so hard.”

With Carter again leading them, the group
retreated back to the lane in front of the Inn where another
confrontation had played out. There were a couple of dead skins and
a dying militia woman. She was lying in a pool of her own blood on
the sidewalk. She had apparently been surprised by one of the
creatures, which had wandered up from out of the darkness along
with its buddy. One had latched onto her throat, ripping open her
carotid artery, while the other one had bitten into her wrist and
upper arm. Her skin, already pale from the lack of sunlight for
this season, resembled the color and even consistency of
watered-down milk.

Gazing down at her for just a second, Carter
looked away when she opened her eyes. She would likely be looking
for sympathy from him and he had none. He found it almost
impossible to find any real connection to others, regardless of the
circumstances. Some considered it a character flaw; he had always
thought of it as liberating. The thing about it was that it wasn’t
just other people he didn’t care about. He really didn’t care much
for himself either, but he rarely thought about that.

Finding Earl in the crowd standing around
the two other bodies, Carter motioned to the woman and ordered,
“Deal with that. Will ya?”

The big, uni-browed thug of a man scrunched
his equally big forehead and asked, “Deal with?”

Carter rolled his eyes and curled his lip
into an irritated snarl as he stormed back into the hotel. He was
looking for the Colonel and suspected where he would find him.
Carter walked to his left straight into the dining room.

The Colonel sat at a long table with Kit
sitting at the opposite end. Both had plates of food and glasses of
wine in front of them. The Colonel was enjoying his meal, shoveling
forkful after forkful of food into his mouth and washing it down
with long drinks from his wine glass, looking very pleased with
himself.

His brain still surging with adrenaline,
Carter bit back the urge to growl at the Colonel, sitting
comfortably and enjoying a meal prepared and served to him on clean
dishes while Carter was out removing threats to the Colonel’s
plans. Carter forced himself to swallow the acidic bile of
resentment that rose to the back of his throat.

When the Colonel motioned to an empty seat
with an empty plate sitting at it, Carter sat, but refused to look
at the other man or at Kit. She appeared nervous and jittery at the
opposite end of the table. She ate quietly, what little she did
eat, but drank greedily from her wine glass, emptying it twice in
quick succession. Keeping her head down, Kit did chance quick
glances with her eyes at the two men but quickly looked away if
either caught her stare.

The Colonel finally said pleasantly, “Dear.
Will you please give us men some time to discuss plans? I’m sure
this wouldn’t interest you in the least. I will see you in a little
while though.”

Kit swallowed her most recent bite and
dumped the contents of her glass into her mouth, hurriedly stood,
and skittered away from the table. She left the room and Colonel
Bear returned his attention to Carter.

“Hungry?” asked the Colonel.

“Not so much really.”

“Thirsty?”

With his serpent’s grin in full flourish,
Carter answered, “Depends on what’s to drink.”

The Colonel picked a string of meat from his
front teeth. “As luck would have it,” he said, “I think I have what
you want.” He produced a bottle filled with fiery, brown liquid.
“Don’t know if this is your brand, but I thought it would do.”

Carter lifted his tumbler and tilted it
toward the Colonel, who pulled the bottle’s cork and filled the
glass.

“Please tell me about the surprise you have
for me,” the Colonel said. “But first, have you dealt with the
problems out front?”

Carter poured his glass’ contents into his
mouth, savoring the burning the alcohol created when it came into
contact with the open sores on the insides of his lower lip. The
pain helped to center and focus him. “Yeah, we cleaned up the
street a little but that won’t be the last of ‘em. I think they
know we’re here now. They’re gonna keep coming at us. This isn’t
gonna end.”

Rolling that over in his mind, the Colonel
nodded his head, acknowledging that he understood. “And the
other?”

Carter then related to Colonel Bear that he
had watched a boat pull alongside the derelict cruise ship. When he
saw the people climb out of the fishing boat and board the
monstrous ship, he thought that perhaps one of them was a woman he
might have recognized. He thought that she might be a survivor from
Skyview in Soldotna. He even went so far as to suggest that perhaps
she had been working with the outsiders that attacked them. If it
was her and she had worked with them, then it stood to reason that
the people with her were probably the ones for whom they were
looking.

Carter enjoyed several glasses of whiskey
while he talked. The Colonel split his time between listening
intently to Carter’s observations and refilling Carter’s glass.

“I didn’t know it would be this dark,” Jess
remarked. She tilted her flashlight to make certain it was working
properly. It barely did anything to mitigate the oppressive
darkness into which they were walking.

“Yeah,” Neil said. “It kind of...kind of
takes your breath away, doesn’t it?”

“Maybe we should quiet down a bit,” Emma
said. “No point in drawing them to—” She cut her comment short when
she spotted the duo of ghouls appearing in the tight hallway from
one of the several open doors. “See?” she whispered.

The beasts’ duet filled the narrow corridor
with an aggressive buzz that tickled the backs of all of their
throats. Not facing their prey yet, the two sniffed the air like
hungry predators trying to get a fix on their quarry, their beastly
profiles casting themselves on the walls as wicked shadows. Slowly
they pivoted themselves so that they were facing the four humans,
glowing red in the darkness with delicious life.

Neil and Emma marched down the hallway,
armed and driven by deadly intent. Neil was carrying his faithful
blue aluminum baseball bat he had used countless times to dispatch
the undead. Emma had become more accustomed to using her rifle as
her primary weapon, but she had recently acquired another option,
which had caught her attention at William’s lodge. It was a long
fire poker that William typically used at his outdoor fire pit. The
tool was a single piece of solid cast iron that had been honed to a
sharpened point and boasted an equally sharp hook close to the same
end, adding additional heft to its hitting power. To Emma, the
poker resembled a weapon from the age of armored knights. She
hadn’t been given the opportunity to use it yet, so she was excited
for the chance.

She stepped ahead of Neil and swung her new
weapon in a wide arc, sinking the hook into the side of one of the
creatures’ heads. Afraid that it was irretrievably stuck, Emma
pulled desperately and nearly fell backward when the heavy poker
came away very easily. Recovering quickly, Emma spun around and hit
the second zombie with all the force of a freight train. The former
woman’s head came apart like over ripened fruit, leaving from only
her chin down still intact.

“That may be the most disgusting thing I
have ever seen.” William’s facial expression, a sagging grimace,
proved his point.

Emma chuckled. “I don’t do a lot of that
sort of thing. I usually watch you do it and then clean things up
with my rifle. Geez! That can really take it out of ya.”

“You don’t have to hit them that hard
anymore,” Neil said. “I think their skulls are really starting to
get brittle. Most of the ones we’re seeing have been dead for quite
some time. We should put a better handle on that thing when we get
back. Make it easier to hold and swing.”

Emma smiled and said wryly, “Yeah. This
probably wasn’t how designers envisioned these things being used I
guess. The all-purpose tool. No home should be without one.”

William looked at the clawed hammer in his
hand and wondered about his choice. Did he want to let those things
get that close to him? He shuddered at the prospect. He would have
to do something about that. They would just have to figure
something out with the flashlights.

Her voice cracking , Jess asked, “How far
down is the infirmary?”

Neil answered, “Two.”

The four of them continued down the hallway,
closing every door they passed to ensure against surprises. Coming
to a set of stairs that led further into the ship, Neil remarked,
“We should have brought Jerry, or maybe Danielle.”

“Why?” William asked.

Emma understood Neil’s reasoning and agreed
with him. She said, “The zekes, they make a pretty distinctive
sound.”

“Yeah,” William said. “When we were on foot
back in Whittier...when you guys happened along…we heard it. It’s
their moan. It’s worse than a banshee wail.”

Looking over the stairway’s railing and into
the gloom, Emma said quietly, “Younger ears are sensitive to an
underlying buzzing.”

William nodded. “Yeah. I heard it too.”

“The more there are and the more agitated,”
Neil said, “the louder the moan gets, and so does the buzz. We can
hear it too when they’re in groups. It’s different with Jerry, and
I suspect Danielle too. Danny saved our butts more than once out on
the road when he heard...felt.... whatever it was. We think that as
we get older, our ears lose that sensitivity. We could really use
Jerry right about now.”

Emma snarked, “Hindsight’s a bitch.”

“Yeah. Let’s go,” Neil said and started down
the stairs into the pitch.

The air in the lower deck was stale and
musty, reeking of the grave. It was much cooler as well, though the
air was still, almost stagnant. Perhaps most striking was the
darkness, however. There was virtually no light at all. Their
flashlights were foreign, alien in the black void.

Looking at a placard he had taken from the
wall, Neil whispered, “According to this map, we go to the end of
this hall and down the next set of stairs. The infirmary will be
right...” He cut his words short when they heard the scraping of
lethargic feet across the cold floor. This corridor was narrower
than the one on the deck above and there were more doors.